NEW YORK (GenomeWeb News) – HemoShear today announced a partnership with Expression Analysis to develop a database for evaluating the vascular pharmacology of new drug compounds.
The database will provide information on the genomic response of vascular cells to about 75 existing drug compounds that span a wide range of drug classes and that have been accepted, black-boxed, or withdrawn from the market.
Expression Analysis will sequence more than 2,000 human RNA samples, resulting in a transcriptome of each sample correlating to the state of the vascular cells in response to a specific drug.
"Sequencing the transcriptome can reveal the expressed quantities of protein-coding messages and isoforms of all active genes as well as detect novel post-transcriptional modifications that HemoShear and the scientific community have yet to identify as significant," Wendell Jones, vice president of statistics and bioinformatics at Expression Analysis, said in a statement. "In contrast, traditional techniques such as microarrays can only detect changes in expression of predetermined genetic content within a more limited dynamic range."
The work is being funded with a $4.3 million Phase II Small Business Innovation Research grant from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.
The alliance also supports HemoShear's Division of Quantitative and Computational Sciences. Expression Analysis will provide the bioinformatics and computational support to process the genomic data in a defined format.
"Pharmaceutical companies can use this database to establish a true risk profile of their compounds and investigate potential positive or negative effects," Nicole Hastings, vice president of laboratory operations at HemoShear, said. "We can provide insights about the risks associated with continuing development of new compound candidates by comparing to other drugs in our database that are related by class, genomic signature, or mechanism of action."